


& we sure as hell have nothing now

by inconocible



Series: blow a kiss, fire a gun [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, But still you shouldn't read if you haven't finished season 7 probably, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e18 Mystery of the Thousand Moons, Episode: s01e19 Storm Over Ryloth, Episode: s07e12 Victory and Death, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Clones (Star Wars), Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, I made myself sad with this, Non-Linear Narrative, Semi-Graphic Depiction of Death, Semi-graphic depiction of illness, The Force, This is a season 1 story framed by season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24058219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inconocible/pseuds/inconocible
Summary: “Well, I don’t think we’re going to die,” Rex says. “But -- but if we do, I’ll be right here with you, don’t worry.”or: Ahsoka finds her confidence and forges a Force-bond with Rex in season 1;or: Ahsoka and Rex at the end of all things, at the end of season 7;or: the end & the beginning & the beginning & the end.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano
Series: blow a kiss, fire a gun [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1640044
Comments: 18
Kudos: 132





	& we sure as hell have nothing now

**Author's Note:**

> _do you understand that we will never be the same again?_   
>  _the future’s in our hands & [we will never be the same again](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGR4U7W1dZU)_

(This is how it ends, kind of:)

“You can leave,” he says. “If that’s what you really think is best. If the Gen--” He sucks in a breath, turns his head in a cringe. He huffs out a heavy breath, reaches for her, holds her by her upper arms, both his blistered, rough hands wrapped around her tired biceps.

“No one was able to stop you when you decided to leave before, and I know I can’t stop you now, if that’s your choice,” he says. “But that’s _your_ choice, _not_ mine. I am _not_ leaving you. That’s _my_ choice.”

“You _know_ we shouldn’t stay together,” she says, but it is for the thousandth, perhaps the millionth, time since they crashed down on this gods-forsaken planet, and she is tired. Tired of saying it, tired of fighting with him about it; tired of lifting and carrying and remembering and mourning and burying and planning. She can’t bring herself to look at him, her eyes too exhausted by the truth, so she rolls them at him, instead, an old reflex, her gaze turned vaguely in the direction of the wreckage beyond his left shoulder. “Rex, you _know_ we need to plan to --”

“Ahsoka,” he insists. The edges of his fingernails, caked and stained with dirt and old, dried blood, begin to dig into the tender skin of her arms. There’s a command there in his voice, hard, and tired, like the set of his jaw, like the past two weeks. She sighs, follows it, looks up, meets his eyes. 

The argument spills over into their minds, then, and Ahsoka wonders vaguely if this is how Anakin and Obi-Wan used to feel when they fought -- used to feel _all of the time_ , because it seemed like they were constantly either fighting or making up about something -- this waves-crashing, push-pulling of wills, of desires, of personalities. It certainly doesn’t feel like much of anything she ever experienced with either Anakin or Obi-Wan (well, unless you count the day she walked: Anakin pleading with her not to leave, her slamming down her bond with him, almost, but not quite, breaking it).

The meeting of her mind with Rex’s in the Force, in their strange command-but-somehow-more-than-that-now bond, is a breaching of a border; is flush with the urge to hold on and the urge to let go; is two magnets, attracting and repelling all at once. Is an ocean, shimmering under the heavy clouds of their current discord: A harmony in a warm minor chord of shared trauma and grief; years and miles of deep and aching and fierce affection, and care, and pride, and loyalty.

The last two people alive who care about each other, about this graveyard of a galaxy, about all the ones who are marching on ahead.

 _Look at us, we’re all that we have left, you’re going to throw it away?!_ His thoughts are almost as clear in her mind as Anakin’s used to be, and she would be full of wonder if she wasn’t so damn _tired_ , wonder over how his mind against hers in their command bond has managed to crescendo from the familiar whisper they've shared for years to this, now; over how it’s even possible that their bond is this functional, this deep, this clear, this loud, now, with him still not really being a Force user. 

_I’m not throwing it away, I’m listening to reason and_ \-- “Strategy!” she yells, shaken by the weird intensity of having this fight between their minds, in their bond, finding her voice again. She wrenches her right arm out of his grip, the urge to do something with her hands -- talk? fight? -- coming to her in a rush. “Look, Rex, you’re not --”

“I don’t care!” he yells back.

They’re both breathing hard, glaring at each other, ragingly mad at everything, at every _damn_ thing that has brought them to this point. In a moment of clarity, the grave level of danger they’ve put themselves in dawns upon her. She suddenly sees Rex’s clenched jaw, feels her own clenched fist, perceives the precipice they’re on, both of them about to launch everything in a devastating salvo right at one another if they aren’t careful, if they don’t disengage, right now. 

_Stand down!_ she mentally flashes to him, scowling, propping her right hand on her hip.

“I don’t care about strategy any more,” he says again, a little calmer, a little quieter, though she feels his anger and hurt and pain simmering hot in his Force signature still, ready to boil over if either of them dare to push it. “We’re the last two people left who know -- know what happened!” He shakes his head. “You want to go? Maybe you’re right, maybe I’m not thinking clearly. Maybe you should go! But I -- I _swear_ to you, I’m not gonna be the one leaving.”

He huffs out a sigh, lets go of her left arm roughly, turns on his heel, back toward the wreckage, like they have a thousand, a million times since the crash several days ago. He takes about four steps before he stops, scrubs his hands over his face and head, his shoulders heaving with his harsh breaths.

Ahsoka folds her arms across her chest, rubs her hands over her upper arms, over the places where his hands just were. _Rex_ , she nudges at him, across their bond, gentler. He sighs again, gives his mental attention to her, but keeps his back turned, his head down. She hugs herself tighter. “It’s not _about_ us, how we feel, what we --” she sighs, shakes her head. “The galaxy has changed. There are no more Jedi, and you -- we’re _wanted_. You _know_ splitting up will be safer.”

“I can’t,” he says. And _I won’t_ , he adds, fiercely, in their bond, in her mind.

Still, he walks away. 

*

(And this is how it begins, kind of:)

“Hey, hey, stay with me. Hey, come on, kid.” The sensation of the hard, cool planes of his armor against her overheated skin and the sharp urgency in his voice bring her back from the edges of consciousness.

She tries to sit up, but she can’t quite get there -- her body hurts too much, and he’s still holding her in both his arms, the way he caught her. She settles for opening her eyes, lifting her head a little, relieved to be free of the sensation of his vambrace digging into her rear lek.

“Ah, hey, Commander,” Rex says, a little gentler.

“Hey, Captain,” she says, though she barely manages it, her breath sticking in her lungs, her body burning up with fever. She coughs, her whole body shaking with the force of it. Rex pulls a face at her, something sad and soft, a face she hasn't seen him -- or any of the clones, really -- make before. She’s been with the 501st -- with Anakin -- for several months, now, and she’s certainly gotten to know some of the clones better, but this -- she’s never seen what looks almost like despair, like grief, like _regret_ , on his face, before. 

"Hey, it’s alright," he says quietly, almost to himself, as he tightens his grip on her and shifts, lowering himself out of the awkward, kneeling stance he’d taken as he’d dove to catch her when she’d started to faint a moment ago. He lowers both of them down to the floor of the lab, still holding her. 

She’s woozy -- she almost passed out, just now -- but she’s the Commander, she reminds herself, she needs to be strong, and she tries, again, to sit up.

“Easy, kid,” Rex says, "here," and he's supporting her shoulders, helping her shift to sit up beside him. It takes an awful lot of energy to sit up, and she sighs, leans back against the counter, rests the side of her head against his shoulder pauldron.

“I’m really tired,” she mumbles, little more than an exhale of breath that happens to form words. 

“Well,” Rex says. “I guess you should rest.” He shifts her again, pushes at her gently to get her sitting up against the wall instead of against him. “I’m going to check on the men, while I -- while I still can,” he says. He sighs resolutely, and stands, and something about the determination she can feel him putting into his movement bolsters hers. 

“Wait,” she says. “I’ll come too.”

He looks down at her, eyes her with a raised eyebrow. “You, ah -- you don’t look.” He frowns. “You should rest.”

“They’re my men, too,” Ahsoka says, and she reaches down within herself, gathers up the last reserves of her strength, tilts her head at Rex. “I should see them one last time, before.” 

“Yeah,” Rex sighs.

Ahsoka reaches up, offers him her open right hand. “Just -- give me a hand,” she says, and he reaches down, both of them grasping at one another’s forearms as he helps her get to her feet. She sways a little, struggles to find her center of balance, and Rex keeps frowning at her. 

“Are you sure you’re --”

“ _Yes_ ,” she says, letting go of his hand, and Rex shakes his head at her. “Just --” A cough rips through her again, her lungs feeling like they’re full of shards of glass, and she doubles over, trying to cough into her elbow, but her lekku and montrals all feel like they weigh a million pounds; it hurts to move her head too much. The coughing spell passes, Rex still standing before her, his face pulled down into a gentle, sad, soft frown. “Just, stay close?” she asks, her voice coming out smaller and weaker than she wants.

Rex’s frown wavers, almost like it wants to become a smile. “Of course,” he says. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Okay,” Ahsoka says, and they set off, the walk around the room almost as taxing on their virus-riddled bodies as the fight to purge all the Separatist droids from Vindi’s facility was. But they, both of them, speak to each trooper, call each brother by name, offer a hopeful thought, a comforting word, to all of them. Jar-Jar starts following behind them, the only person still left in a sealed suit, offering each of the men water once they get done talking with Rex and Ahsoka.

“Yousa guys restin’ now,” Jar-Jar says, once they’ve finished checking on each of the clones, and on Padme. “Yousa lookin’ pretty bad. Yousa faces’ turnin’ _blue_ , an’ --”

“Thank you, sir,” Rex says, but the end of the sentence devolves into a cough, and he doubles over, then crumples somewhat gracelessly to the floor. He leans the back of his head against the counter, breathing heavily as he recovers from the coughing fit. “We know what our faces look like,” he says grimly.

Ahsoka sits down beside Rex again as Jar-Jar turns away, still talking to, ostensibly, Padme, but truly, himself, about how “wesa all dyin’ here if Ani not comin’ back quick.” Ahsoka pulls her knees to her chest, sighs, closes her eyes, leans her head against the counter next to Rex’s.

“Excellent work, Commander,” Rex offers. She looks at him sidelong, not really moving her head, just turning it a little, enough to see him. She blinks the fever-haze away and studies Rex’s profile for a moment until he, too, turns his head. “You’ve led the men well today,” he adds, meeting her eyes.

“I’m about to get us all killed,” she sighs.

“That isn’t your fault,” he says. “You’ve done everything you could. Everything you _should_.” She can practically feel pride radiating from him, and she offers him as much of a smile as she can. “A good leader stays with her men until the end. They know you as that leader now.”

“Thanks,” she says, and she closes her eyes again -- she’s so tired. Just a quick rest.

At length she wakes, restless, shaking with fever chills. She looks to her right; Rex is still there sitting on the floor beside her, shivering, too, the blue streaks running across his face thicker and darker than they were before.

Ahsoka reaches out with the Force, surveys the room. “Flash is dead,” she says, dismayed, and he nods.

“I know,” he says, swallowing thickly. He turns his head away from her, coughs, then settles. “He was a good trooper.”

Ahsoka shivers again; she pulls her knees tightly to her chest and folds her arms around them, hugging herself. “C’mere,” Rex murmurs, and he opens his left arm, an invitation: she accepts, leans in, her bent knees drawn up next to his torso. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, rubs his open left palm back and forth a few times over her left shoulder and upper arm. She leans her head on his pauldron again, this time against the front of it, near where it meets his chest-piece. 

Ahsoka has been able to feel, on and off, in pulses of light, Anakin and Obi-Wan, both of the training bonds she holds with them. They’re fighting their own battle, somehow, somewhere, she senses, and Anakin’s energy in their bond is frenetic, fear creeping in that Ahsoka doesn’t feel strong enough to bear witness to, doesn’t want to believe her master feels. So she withdraws a little from him, turns her senses to Obi-Wan, finds him sad and gentle and also calculating some kind of plan, as usual. They’re so far away, she can’t truly _communicate_ with them, but she still feels the ghost of a command there, and she can’t tell if it’s coming from Anakin or from Obi-Wan -- maybe it’s both of them? -- _hold on, Ahsoka; stay strong, be the brave Jedi we know you are._

“I -- I don’t want Anakin to know that I’m scared,” she whispers to Rex. It feels transgressive to speak louder than a whisper, with all of the men quietly suffering around them.

“Why not?” he asks, pitching his voice similarly low.

“Jedi aren’t supposed to be scared,” she says. “We’re supposed to be brave.” She bows her head into the top of her knees and coughs, her whole body feeling like it might explode, fly apart around her broken-glass lungs. Rex squeezes her shoulder.

“You are,” he says, “you’re very brave,” but she picks her head up, shakes it.

“The Jedi say that when you die, you pass into the Force,” she tells him. “And, some say, the way things are meant to be, is, when you die, all your old Padawans are there to bury your body, and all your old Masters are there to receive your soul.” She looks up at him, and she’d never _cry_ in front of her troops, it’s definitely just her fever, making him swim in front of her. “But my Masters are still alive,” she finishes in a small voice. “I don’t -- I don’t know what’s supposed to happen if you’re still just a Padawan.”

“Well, I don’t think we’re going to die,” Rex says. “But -- but if we do, I’ll be right here with you, don’t worry.”

A trooper across the room groans, and Ahsoka feels the ripple in the Force in the moment that he dies, and she gasps, slaps a hand over her mouth. “Oh, it’s Runner, he’s -- he’s gone,” she whispers.

This is different from anything Ahsoka’s ever felt before, so much more of an _intimate_ way to taste death. On the battlefield, the ripples of death are only one element, only one feeling alongside the rhythm of the energy of the fight; alongside the way the Force feels, flowing through her body; alongside the blinding light and heat and intensity of her master, always with her, leading her, one pace ahead. But now, the slow, painful deaths of her men, the tired despair of the ones still trying to hold on -- they’re all she can feel, pressing heavily in on her mind, and she sniffs back a sob, feels herself begin to cry, despite how much she doesn’t want to, shouldn’t. 

“I know, shh,” Rex soothes, and her body hurts too much to move anymore, to cling like a youngling, like she wants to, so she reaches for him with her mind, with her whole being, in the Force, curls around his signature, distantly feeling him still gently rubbing the fever-hot skin of her left shoulder and upper arm with his open left hand. They’re all going to _die_ here, not even on the battlefield, but in a karking _hole_ in the ground on Naboo because of a _psychopath scientist_ , and Ahsoka has only just turned 15 years old, and she shouldn’t even be _down_ in this hole, anyway, and she is suddenly _terrified_ of being brave, of being the last one left alive. She’s panicking, she realizes, distantly, but she can’t pull herself out of the spiral. She deeply, desperately, _selfishly_ , doesn’t want Rex to die first, doesn’t want him to leave her behind, leave her alone down here. She sends a plea into the Force for this to be true; promises the Force that she will try her very best to be a better Jedi tomorrow, if only Rex doesn’t leave her alone today.

“Hey, I won’t. I won’t,” Rex promises in a low murmur, and Ahsoka doesn’t have the presence of mind left to wonder at this, to be surprised that he felt her, heard her, somehow. “I swear to you, we are both making it out of here alive. I have you, little one, I’m not leaving you, okay?”

“Okay,” she manages, and he keeps rubbing his hand up and down the side of her arm, over the joint of her shoulder, soothing her, grounding her, until she relaxes a little, until she gains a little control over her panic, until the tidal wave of fear begins to recede. 

At length, Ahsoka feels another ripple in the Force. “Touchdown is gone,” she whispers, and Rex doesn’t even respond, just sighs.

“Do clones believe that you pass into the Force, too?” Ahsoka asks a few moments later, wanting something to focus on other than how _bad_ she feels, how _scared_ she is, how much everything _hurts_.

“Not exactly,” Rex says, and she realizes how much worse the virus’ attack on his body must be getting for him, his voice slurring and weak with pain. “C'mon, _vod’ika_ , you -- you know the stories,” he mumbles, struggling to speak. “You know -- know our brothers. Our brothers march on around us.”

“Can -- can you tell me?” she asks, her question weakened by how she starts coughing again. He seems to come back at himself as he glances down at her and finds not a little brother but a little Jedi, dying against him. 

“Ah, well,” he starts, pulling her a little closer, shifting a little, getting comfortable, “it’s part of the stories Jango told us, when we were all very small,” and he tells her, quietly, haltingly, pausing now and again to struggle for his breath, about the beliefs that all of the brothers before them are marching on, that someday they’ll all be together again. It’s hard going, the telling, occasionally having to pause to check on her, to shake her, to keep her awake, both of them coughing and gasping for their breath around the glass-shards exploding in their lungs, both of them shivering and shaking and burning with fever -- but, in the interminable hours it takes until the anti-virus is injected into the air in the facility, until Anakin is there, perfect and luminous and rescuing them almost at the last minute as usual, Rex never lets go of Ahsoka’s shoulder, never stops talking to her. Never leaves her feeling alone.

*

When Ahsoka wakes up in the healer’s ward in the Temple, she is immediately soothed by the warm, steadfast glow of Obi-Wan, sitting in a chair next to her and frowning intently at his datapad -- paperwork, probably. She watches him for a long moment, reaching out in her mind to her bond with Anakin, nudging at him, feeling his attention flare bright toward her. She closes her eyes, smiles to herself -- her master is on his way here, now -- and Obi-Wan sits up straighter, puts his datapad down.

“Hello there,” he says, and she opens her eyes again, smiles at him.

“Hi,” she says, pushing herself up to sitting in the bed.

“Are you feeling alright?” he asks.

She nods, takes an experimental deep breath. Her chest feels sore, but it doesn’t feel like she’s breathing in glass anymore, and her cough is gone, so that’s all a great improvement. “Better,” she says.

“That’s very good,” he says, and that’s all he has the time to say before Anakin bursts in, all effervescent concern for her, the Force humming with his contentment to see her healthy again. 

“And Rex?” she manages to ask, once she can finally get a word in around Anakin, a few minutes later, after he tells the story she can’t quite keep up with about Iego and climbing down a cliff for the anti-viral root and a Separatist plot and _angels_ , really, Master? 

“He’s doing great,” Anakin says. He eyes her. “He told me you were an incredible leader down there, Ahsoka. I’m proud of you.”

Ahsoka feels a warm blush come up into the tips of her montrals. “He was, too,” she says. 

“Well, then I’m proud of both of you,” Anakin concedes. “I can’t believe you guys only lost three members of the whole squad.”

Ahsoka frowns, looks down, traces the pattern of the threads in the healers’ blanket that’s over her lap. “I’m sorry we did,” she says.

Anakin sits on the edge of the bed. “Hey,” he says, laying his hand over hers. She raises her head, holds his gaze. “It’s not your fault,” Anakin says. “These things happen. You guys held it together the best you could.”

Ahsoka sighs. “I know,” she says. “It just really hurt, sitting there, feeling them die, not being able to _do_ anything about it.”

Anakin squeezes her hand. “I’m sorry, Snips,” he says. “It’ll --” he looks away, sighs. “It’ll get easier, trust me.”

Anakin leaves too quickly, imploring Ahsoka to rest so she can get back up to full fighting strength soon. All of the survivors of the Blue Shadow Virus were required to stay in the Healers’ wing for at least two days, Anakin had told her, and Ahsoka suspected he’d floated off to see Padme.

Obi-Wan says, “If it’s alright with you, I have quite a lot of work to do, and it is nice and quiet here, now that Anakin’s gone,” and Ahsoka smiles and rolls her eyes and tells him he’s more than welcome to stay and settles back into the bed. “You really should rest,” Obi-Wan says, “it looks as though we may all be headed for the blockade around Ryloth soon,” and Ahsoka nods, lays back, closes her eyes again.

The Temple is her home, and being here is relaxing to her mind. She sinks into a light meditative state, soaking up the Force energies of all the beings here, of the familiar place of her childhood. There had been a moment, during her panic back on Naboo, when she’d thought she’d never be here again, and she is grateful that that didn’t come to pass.

Grateful that Rex didn’t leave her behind, didn’t let either of them die, back there.

Rex.

Ahsoka opens her eyes. “Master?” she asks.

Obi-Wan puts his datapad down in his lap. “Yes, my dear?”

She tilts her head at him. “Do you believe that the clones pass into the Force, with us, when they die?” She feels like a little youngling, hearing a question that feels so basic come out of her mouth, but she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it all, in the hazy moments of lucidity between getting rescued a couple days ago on Naboo and now -- about Rex’s stories; about what waits for them all, after they die; about these people who were literally _born so that could they die_ ; and is just the clones who were born to die, or is it all of them? And why is she, a Padawan learner in a tradition built on peace-keeping, now leading squadrons of men, watching, _feeling_ them die, in battle and in other situations set off by the war? _Why_?

Obi-Wan shifts the datapad around in his lap, crosses one leg over the other, leans forward with his elbow propped on his crossed knee and his chin in his hand, strokes his beard thoughtfully. “All life passes into the Force upon death, Ahsoka,” he says, and, yeah, that’s what she thought he’d say.

“But Rex was telling me about what the clones believe,” she continues. “That their fallen brothers are always marching, and that they will march on and meet them again.” She looks at Obi-Wan. “Will -- will we meet them again, too?” she asks. “If they -- if they were born to _die_ for us, and made for us to lead them, doesn’t it stand to reason that -- that we have to fit into their concept of the afterlife, somehow? That we would see them again, in the Force?”

Obi-Wan strokes his beard more. “All very good questions,” he finally says. “Ones that I don’t have ready answers to. Perhaps we should meditate on them together, when you’re ready to be up and about?”

Ahsoka smiles and rolls her eyes, but says, “Okay, master,” because, okay, maybe. Really what she thinks she’ll do, if she feels good enough, if she has enough time before they ship out again, is meditate with Obi-Wan about something else and then go do her own research in the library about dying, about the Force, about what the Jedi think about other cultures’ spiritual traditions. But, anyway, regardless of her thousands of questions, his presence is warm and comforting and, unlike her own master, she rarely passes up an opportunity to share an hour of meditation with him. “Maybe tomorrow?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says, and he leans back in his chair, uncrosses and recrosses his legs, dives back into his datapad, and Ahsoka sighs, settles back into the healers’ bed, gets back to her thoughts.

Rex, she thinks sleepily, as she’s about to slip back into a nap. Rex feels so _close_ to her. He’s here, somewhere, in the healing wing, but it’s not that -- not his physical proximity. It’s almost -- almost like how Master Obi-Wan felt at first, like there’s a training bond budding there between them that maybe technically shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t even make _sense_ , Rex isn’t a Jedi, what --

Ahsoka falls asleep with the answers all still extremely unclear. After all, their assault on Ryloth is coming up, and she needs to be healthy, and she’s exhausted. _Questions for another time, my dear_ , she can almost hear Obi-Wan saying, soft, in her mind, in their bond, as she slips out of consciousness. 

*

Ahsoka loses her entire squadron over Ryloth, and it feels so _awful_ , so different, now that she knows what it really _feels_ like to feel a man die, a man that she was supposed to be leading, keeping safe.

Ahsoka loses her entire squadron over Ryloth, and she asks herself if she’s ever going to be able to lead a squadron again, if she shouldn’t just turn in her lightsabers right now, leave this supposedly-peace-keeping-actually-war-making life behind altogether.

But Anakin will never, would never, leave, or stop making his _plans_ , so she is once again thrust into the leader’s position at the holotable.

She’s unsure, she’s feeling haunted by the feeling of all of her men dying behind her, by the regret for her behavior that got them there in the first place, and the clock is ticking, and Anakin is already gone, and the officers are arguing that her strategy isn’t great, and she’s going to fail again, and they’re really all going to die this time, and Anakin _needs her to act_ , and --

And Rex.

Rex could be boring a hole in the side of her montral, if his eyes had lasers in them like the clankers’. Rex is begging her to find her confidence. To find the good plan, and execute it well. To be the leader he knows she is growing up to be. _You are, you’re very brave_ bounces around in her brain, too laser-sharp and loud and clear to be just her memory of him saying it in the lab on Naboo a week ago. 

She nudges back, gentle, tentative, just like when she was learning how to use her bond with Master Obi-Wan, and Rex actually _responds._ He pushes the strongest sense of urgency and pride and belief in her to her, and she doesn’t even have time to wonder about it, to gape open-mouthed at him like she wants to, because now she’s laying out the strategy and now Admiral Yularen is walking onto the bridge and asking if the strategy will work and now Ahsoka is saying, with all the confidence she can muster, “Yes, it will,” and -- and now Rex is gripping the holotable white-knuckled and grinning at her like she’s never seen him do before.

Rex.

*

After, later, Anakin is on his back under a busted-up Y-wing and Ahsoka is sitting cross-legged on the flight deck next to it with his big tool kit open in front of her, carefully levitating the entire contents of the tool kit in a perfect circle in front of her, passing things to Anakin using the Force when he asks for them. (This is absolutely not a frivolous use of the Force, by the way. For them, this is the perfect picture of a dutiful Padawan sitting with her Master in an extremely serious meditation session, thank you very much.)

“Master,” Ahsoka says, at length, between his requests for spanners and sockets and drill bits. 

“Yeah, Snips?” he asks, muffled a bit, from inside the wiring casing of the Y-wing.

“I -- for my Padawan class, we had to read a few articles about Force bonds, and write a discussion post about our bond with our Master,” she starts.

“Well?” he asks. “Did you do okay on the assignment?”

“Yes,” she tells him. “I got a passing mark,” although Barriss got an _exceptional passing_ , which almost no one but Barriss ever gets anymore, all of them doing their assignments from a distance, from their war ships, most of them working when they’re tired and hungry and even a little hurt. Trying to keep up with just the bare minimum of her schooling during the war has been such a struggle, and yet somehow Barriss has managed to keep her place at the top of their class.

“That’s good,” Anakin says, distractedly. “Give me the five-eighths,” he adds, and she rolls her eyes at him, levitates the socket over.

“Master,” she says, trying to forget about Barriss’s marks and focus on her actual question. She did the assignment three days ago, while they were en route to Ryloth, and she didn’t really give it much attention at the time, but now, after that moment with Rex today on the bridge, she’s curious. “None of the articles we were assigned to read said anything about the command bonds that all of the Jedi generals in the GAR report having with their Commander and Captain clones.”

“They didn’t?” he asks. “Well, I guess -- “ and the five-eighths socket comes drifting back over to her, and she catches it, puts it back into its place floating with the other things -- “now, uh, let’s try the one-half bendy socket-head, please,” he says, and she passes it to him -- “uh, I guess that stuff is just too new, and all the scholarly Jedi who write those articles are probably out in the field too, you know? They’re too busy right now.”

“I know,” she says. “But -- what does it feel like?”

“I’m not a scholar, Ahsoka,” Anakin laughs. The one-half bendy socket-head floats back to her, and he says, “Okay, hmm, size five spanner,” and she passes it to him, rearranging the floating pattern of tools in front of her from a circle to a pair of interlocking triangles.

“What does it feel like, Master, your bond with Rex,” she presses, after her triangles are complete.

Anakin slides out from under the Y-wing, pushes his hair back, streaks grease over his forehead. He looks at her triangles, smiles at them. “Nice, very nice,” he says, gesturing at them; she shrugs and smirks at him, but she raises her eyebrows, pushes _Well_? at him through their bond.

Anakin shakes his head at her fondly. “I mean, I don’t know. It actually -- kinda feels like that,” he muses. He reaches for a nearby towel, starts wiping the grease off of his hands. “I guess it kinda feels like when you and I were first getting to know each other, were first developing our bond. It helps in a fight, that's for sure.” 

Ahsoka nudges at his mind with hers, and he nudges back, and it almost tickles, the playful, warm energy between them, and she laughs a little, so distracted that she almost drops the tools. Anakin raises one eyebrow at her, and she raises one back, focuses, concentrates, quickly rearranges the tools back into the perfect circle they’d been in at first, then into three perfectly interlocking circles.

“Good,” Anakin pronounces. 

“You have grease on your face,” she says, and he rolls his eyes at her, starts scrubbing at his face with the towel. “You didn’t really answer my question,” she adds. “I mean, you kinda did. But I don’t --”

“Why don’t you ask Obi-Wan?” Anakin asks, muffled from behind where he’s trying to rub the grease off his forehead. He throws the towel down. “Put those back, let’s go check out that busted LAATi,” he says. 

Ahsoka carefully rearranges the tools inside the bag, picks the bag up, follows him across the hanger. It’s just a walk to the other side of the main hanger bay, but it takes at least an entire five minutes, what with Anakin having to stop and greet every clone working that they pass. 

“Why do you want to know, anyway?” Anakin asks, once they’re finally sitting inside the empty cockpit of the LAATi. He’s already ripping the console out. “Give me the flat-head drill bit,” he says, and she sighs, floats it over to him from the copilot’s seat.

 _Rex_ , she thinks, tries carefully nudging at the idea of where his mind is within hers, and she is shocked to feel him immediately turn his attention to her curiously. _Oh, uh, nothing, just -- hi_ , she thinks, and she quickly withdraws, but not before she feels the impression of his affection, his pride for her, still lingering from the mission earlier today.

“Just curious, I guess,” she tells Anakin. “It’s, uh, it’s so weird that we’re making all this new knowledge, doing things in this war that aren’t in any of the books or articles yet, isn’t it?” ( _It’s so weird that I think I accidentally made a Force bond with Captain Rex when we were both trying not to die together, isn’t it, Master?_ is what she absolutely, definitely does not say.)

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he says. “Maybe when the war is over, you can help write an article about it, you know?”

“Maybe,” Ahsoka says. 

*

(The ending will take a long time to actually _end_. This is just the beginning of it.)

They had agreed to divide the salvage and retrieval into sectors, a way of understanding and tackling the massive amount of work involved in stripping down and scrapping out a whole entire battle cruiser. They’d tried to pull as many of the brothers’ bodies out as possible, first, to bury them before beginning to work on the ship, but they’d also wanted to make absolutely certain they found _everyone_ , so a methodical search by section made the most sense for that, too.

Start in the middle and work our way out, they’d decided, and it’s been several long, hard, angry, grieving, tiring days; they're a little more than halfway done with the task. She lets him go back to his section, waits a moment, then heads back to her own. They’re separated by at least eight sections now, which should be enough space for both of them to cool off.

That was… bad, she thinks, as she pulls her gloves on, as she gets back to work on moving a pile of small, crumpled steel beams blocking access to the storage area for the extra rations -- a priority for now; they’ve gone through everything that was in the Y-wing and in Rex’s kit, and now they need real food. Their fight just now, she thinks, that was _bad_. 

Ahsoka thinks about him all afternoon while she works, but she takes extra care not to think _at_ him, and, honestly? It feels pretty lonely. After the series of events that got them here -- especially the whirl-wind fight for their lives, at the very end -- their bond has morphed into something beyond a command bond, something that it shouldn’t have, shouldn’t be. A _partner bond_ , she had read something like this called, once -- the kind of bond that twins had; that siblings who were allowed to keep a deep relationship had; that, it was rumored, lovers -- not that there were any of those in the Jedi order, right? -- might have. 

Partner.

He’s learned, over the years, a bit of basic mental shielding techniques, and she can tell he’s using them now, for instead of feeling his anger and hurt and pain and affection all directly upon her like a thunderstorm, she feels his emotions in the back of her mind now like the idea of a gentle summer rain, falling upon the roof of a building in which she is tucked safely inside. She knows he’s mad, he’s hurt, he doesn’t want to split up and he doesn’t want to keep fighting with her about it, but -- still, it’s comforting, it's familiar, having him right there with her, in her mind, even if he is mad at her. 

Better than being alone. She's already tried that once, and, not only did she hate it, she couldn't seem to manage to actually _stay_ alone. 

She sighs, moves the last of the fallen beams, turns her attention to an electrical panel, falls meditatively into the sparking jumble of wires that will open the storage room doors. Her mind wanders. She thinks, then tries very much to _not_ think, of Anakin, of how doing work like this always served as his meditation. She wonders if Rafa and Trace are okay, if they made it safely through everything that’s happened. Wonders how many people have died in the past weeks. Wonders if she's always going to have to leave people. If she's going to have to leave Rex. If both of them are destined to die alone. She mulls over her exit strategy while she tinkers.

The doors eventually slide open with a hiss, and she forgets herself, forgets not to immediately, triumphantly, announce, _Got it! Fresh rations tonight!_ to him, through their bond. She bites her lip, sends an apologetic wave over to him and withdraws her mind, starts lifting the crates out and down.

Moments of silence pass, then, with a grudging pride and affection tinted with anger: _Nice job, kid._

She smiles, sad, rueful.

*

A few hours later, Ahsoka is tired again from moving the crates over to their shelter, and she is getting cold, now, with the sun nearly ready to dip below the horizon. She picks her cloak up, glad that she was able to pull it out of the wreckage with minimal damage, and puts it on, clasping it under her throat but leaving the hood down for now. They’ve figured out that they’re close to the pole of this planet, and that it’s mid-autumn; it gets chilly at night, and, for the past few days, there’s been a sparkle of frost over everything in the morning. 

They _have_ to get off this planet, and soon. It might not be long before the natural spring they’ve been collecting water from freezes over. The shelter they built is only going to protect them from the onset of winter for so long. Even how they’ve been sleeping, snug together under a survival blanket like spoons stacked in a drawer to share the heat of their bodies, can only take them so far.

And, once they’re off the planet, once they finally bring themselves to leave their brothers behind, to take their salvage with them and try to _live_ \-- that’ll be the problem. Her biometric data is recognizable, and so is his, and they’re both either presumed dead or presumed traitors, she’s not sure which, and they’ll surely both be executed on sight unless they can play the new Empire just right, and wouldn’t it be better for both of them to find separate tooka-cat holes to slink into and hide for awhile? 

Ahsoka is waiting for the flameless ration heater to do its job on the ration she’d chosen for herself, some kind of ground nerf with dehydrated vegetables. She’s propped it against the side of one of the crates, and is staring at it, watching little curls of steam begin to rise, thinking about what she’s going to have to do.

Rex finally approaches their campsite, clears his throat, sends a wave of _sorry_ and affection and hurt and _pain_ to her, and she presses back to him that she understands. She really does. They are all that they have left, themselves and a dead ship and a field of their dead brothers, the pain of the loss deep and heavy, and it hurts. It _hurts_. It’s enough to make them want to destroy something, but all that they have left are themselves.

She watches him sort through the ration crate until he pulls one out, rips the top open, starts taking it apart, gets the heater going. He puts his own packet of meat and veggies into the heater, then starts sorting through the snacks and extras inside the main pouch while it heats. 

“Here,” he says, handing over to her the tiny packet of grappaberry jam tucked inside his ration, a casual, automatic action that he does seemingly without thinking about it. It’s her favorite, and how many times over the years has he always saved his jam for her? And how many times over the years has he always saved her _life_? And --

“I don’t _want_ to leave you!” she exclaims, as though the hours since their fight haven’t passed at all. He looks at her, surprise in the way the tired lines around his eyes jump. She’s surprised at herself, too, at how intensely that came out.

The very first night, they’d pulled Jesse from the wreckage, shocked to find him still alive -- the only brother who was, as far as they could tell, as far as Ahsoka could feel. Not for long, though. He’d held on just a few hours, still weakly trying to kill them both until the very end, Rex’s arms around him stopping him, until he’d abruptly gasped, “Rex? Commander Tano? Oh, kriff, I’m so -- I’m so sorry -- I don’t -- I didn’t --” and the Force had rippled with pain around them, the intimate, familiar pain of a brother deeply loved, marching on ahead.

That very first night, Rex had held Jesse’s body, had sobbed. And they had buried Jesse, the beginning of the field of helmets, and after that they’d pulled themselves together long enough to set up their shelter, and then he had pulled Ahsoka to him, had held her, too, had cried, and cried, and cried.

She hadn’t. She’d held him back, silent, their minds and bodies twined tight together, promised him in their bond _I’m here I'm not leaving I’m here I'm not leaving I’m here I'm not leaving_ , had been terrified that she was lying.

She hasn’t seen him cry since. And she hasn’t cried yet, not at all. Not that he hasn’t seen her cry a couple times before, over the years, or that she doesn’t want him to see her now -- it’s not that. She just -- it’s been so _much_ , she’s been afraid that if she stopped to cry, to _feel_ , really let herself feel deeply, feel something other than the pervasive pain of death and loss and anger that's soaked her to the bone since the crash, that she wouldn’t be able to pick back up again, keep going.

But now, standing here a handful of days later, something about their fight earlier, something about how body and soul _tired_ she is, something about Rex being so close to her, something about the extremely normal, everyday, act of him reaching out to her, handing his jam to her as though it were three years ago, as though everything were _fine_ \-- 

“Rex, I _don’t_ ,” she says. (But she has to, the logical part of her brain reminds her; she _has to_ \--) She looks down at the dirt under her feet, at the wisps of steam billowing out of both their ration packs, and she’s suddenly breathing too shallow, too fast, her throat going tight.

Something awful and urgent and fragile passes between them, and he’s dropping his ration packet to the ground and crossing the handful of steps that separate them in an instant. He grabs her by her upper arms again, just like he did earlier, but this time his hands are gentle, holding together what’s left of her as she crumbles to dust between his fingers.

 _Rex_ , she manages, nudging at his mind, squeezing her eyes shut against the swell of tears in her tired eyes. The border between their minds is getting all mixed-up and porous again, and both of them lose their knees at the same time, gravity dragging them down to the hard earth. She pitches forward, buries her face against the front of his shoulder pauldron, hangs on to the hard edges of his banged-up armor, and he wraps both his arms around her, one hand digging into the fabric of her cloak, the other rubbing gently over her back and shoulders, holds her as the tidal wave of grief and despair and panic and regret drags her under.

“I know,” he soothes. “Shh, I have you, I know.”

She doesn’t even -- she can’t even form an argument, or a thought, she’s just unmoored, needs a hand to pull her back to shore. _Rex_ , she thinks desperately, and he holds her a little tighter, pushing all of the shimmer of the pride and affection and care he holds for her through their bond to her. 

“I am not leaving you,” he promises again, quiet, steadfast, and it helps but it also _hurts_. She knows what she has to do. “I’m not leaving.”

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i'm very sad, have my feelings.  
> shoutout to the ghost fam chat for putting up with me & my feelings always <3  
> [playlist for our independent gal ahsoka tano on spotify](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4Tj8ZTRZxqgFfMc80vaP7m?si=GDidjI6NSVOacQ9R-SA2_g)


End file.
